Bird's Nest in the House

Now, I've seen EVERYthing!  A few weeks ago, Mr. and Mrs. Black-Capped Chickadee, very determinedly, very silently, excavated the very walls of the house in which I have an apartment. 

It's a grey house that looks very solid.  Chickadees are black and white tiny birds, that don't look solid at all. 

What they removed from the house was minuscule and blue -- about a million little blue pieces of something that used to be house.  I literally carried handsful of pine needles to strew over the blue things that I am sure will never biodegrade.

This construction project took place the pillar between two long modern windows of my bedroom.  A holly tree and a chunky evergreen (spruce?) rise vigorously beyond those windows, providing excellent cover for arriving and departing now-parent birds. 

The hole is about the size of a silver dollar.  Remember silver dollars?  There's a bar in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that has hundreds of silver inserted in its surface and thickly glazed, forever out of reach.  My father gave me 21 silver dollars for my 21st birthday.  But they're not very big.  They don't look bigger than a chickadee.

Chickadees, it turns out, can shrink themselves and zip right into that tiny aperture.  Not only that, chickadees can hover like hummingbirds, like kingfishers, before zipping in to feed their young.

They begin at 5:30 and carry on until dark.

Their studious silence mystifies -- unless it's the chickadee way of not alerting raptors to the presence of the vulnerable.

NOW, to the left of my study windows, Mr. and Mrs. Carolina Wren have imitated Woody Woodpecker.  Their hole for their young is a bit larger, but not much.  A white pine, silky and graceful, waves above this window, sheltering the Carolinas.

They, however, never stop singing all day long.  Even with windows shut, Carolina days make me feel I am drowning in an avian waterfall.

Those who know me, know that Mothers' Day is my least favorite of the entire year.  Watching these bright tip-tilted birds zip in and out of tree and nest, hearing their ceaseless carols, is pulling me through this annual ordeal.

They, also, strewed the ground with tiny blue whatevers.

What an odd feeling it is, to live in a house that looks so substantial, but can be pecked apart by birds.

I love birds, so maybe it's ok...